Cyber Challenge Fills Education Void

The U.S. Cyber Challenge is attracting young college graduates who feel their education has not effectively prepared them for cybersecurity work.

Panelists at the RSA Conference in San Francisco said Tuesday that the Cyber Challenge -- a public-private coalition that puts together cybersecurity competitions and camps for high school and college students and working professionals -- said colleges just aren't cutting it when it comes to preparing students for cybersecurity jobs.

"It's like trying to field a professional baseball team when there's no little league team out there," said former Federal CIO Karen Evans, national director of the Cyber Challenge.

Alex Levinson, a 22-year-old graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology and now a security software engineer at game developer Zynga, said he decided to apply to the Cyber Challenge program after feeling that his education had fallen short of providing him the skills necessary for cybersecurity work.

"Most schools talk about this stuff, you learn how to write a report on what malware is, but you don't actually write malware," he said. "These competitions give the ability to go through and learn the actual hands-on skills that you're going to use in the workplace. The second part of that is you actually get to do it in a pressure-cooker environment."

This is becoming even more of a critical issue, particularly in how the U.S. stacks up against countries such as China, said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute. China's government has 30,000 full-time hackers as well as a 150,000-person cyber militia that could be called up at any time, Paller said. In comparison, the U.S. needs 10,000 to 30,000 hunters who can effectively do cybersecurity work.

"We don't need people who can write or talk about security," Paller said. "We are on the wrong side of the power curve, and we don't have the people to fight the cyber war right now."

The Cyber Challenge, which is now in its third year, is hoping to draw 10,000 participants to participate in camps and competitions across the country this summer. Last year's camp had more than 230 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 48, Evans said.

The program is currently looking for sponsors for this year's Cyber Challenge camps and competitions. Companies and organizations that sponsor the program will be invited to participate in a job fair, where they'll gain access to the in-demand skills of participants, Evans added.

"Right now, the Cyber Challenge is creating a lot of input so that we can have output, which are people," Evans said. "And the outcome is to get that information aligned so that individuals know how to make use of resources to end up in jobs in the federal government, critical infrastructure and private industry."